april08b.indd


Jennifer Duncan 

Working
from
afar


A new trend for librarianship 

“A lot of us work from home on occasion, 
and whenever I talk to my colleagues about 
it, without exception, we feel that a few 
hours spent working away from the offi ce are 
more productive than if we had spent them 
chained to our desks.”—Andrew Pace1 

“I couldn’t stand the thought of being at 
home all day while everyone else was work­
ing at the library….A world of telecommut­
ers sounds like a terribly lonely place.”—Will 
Manley2 

Telecommuting, which once seemed impractical for librarians, is swiftly be­
coming a viable option for employees in 
both technical services and public services. 
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 
by May 2004, 20.7 million people regularly 
worked from home at least once per week 
as part of their primary job. This number 
represented 15 percent of total nonagri­
cultural employment—and 30 percent of 
managerial/professional positions.3 

Societal changes such as increased com­
muting time, rising numbers of dual work­
ing­parents, and an explosion of technology 
that facilitates remote work have fueled both 
the desirability and the feasibility of alter­
native work arrangements. Traditionally, 
librarians have been tethered to a facility 
either because their public service role de­
mands face­to­face interaction or because 
they work with materials housed in the 
building. As collection formats and service 
mechanisms change, however, librarians 
may be poised to take advantage of more 
flexible scheduling arrangements. 

In spring 2007, I embarked on a six­
month telecommuting experiment between 
Washington, D.C., and Logan, Utah, that 
proved to me that most of my daily responsi­
bilities are perfectly compatible with a more 
flexible work arrangement. 

My husband and are both faculty mem­
bers at Utah State University (USU): myself 
as an electronic resources librarian and he 
as a history professor. In summer 2006, my 
husband won a prestigious fellowship at 
the Library of Congress. Acceptance of this 
grant required his presence in Washington, 
D.C., for six months beginning in January 
2007. Because we had a toddler, we agreed 
that it would be unacceptable to split the 
family for such a lengthy stretch. We further 
agreed that unless I was able to join him in 
Washington, either he would have to decline 
the grant, or I would have to, at least tempo­
rarily, step­down from my own tenure­track 
position at the library. Neither option was 
appealing to us—and either certainly would 
have had an extremely negative impact on 
one of our professional lives. 

I determined that I would craft a pro­
posal to the library director permitting me 
to restructure my job, temporarily reducing 
my hours by 25 percent and working the re­
maining hours through telecommuting. This 
proposal was not without risk to the library, 
as it is not particularly usual in our fi eld for 
practitioners to work remotely. However, 
I felt that my job would naturally fi t well 

Jennifer Duncan is electronic resources librarian at Utah 
State University, e-mail: jennifer.duncan@usu.edu 
© 2008 Jennifer Duncan 

216C&RL News April 2008

mailto:jennifer.duncan@usu.edu


with such an arrangement because, as the 
electronic resources librarian, I manage a 
virtual collection and most of my work can 
be done with a phone line and a networked 
computer. My physical location is not par­
ticularly significant, generally speaking. 

Library administration agreed to sup­
port my proposal. Our associate director 
for technical services felt very strongly that 
encouraging flexible work schedules and 
work/life balance was essential to retention 
of and morale among staff.4 Library admin­
istration further agreed to release me from 
selected committee work as well as to pro­
vide me with software and computer clients 
required to perform my job. However, they 
were unable to provide me with essential 
hardware and peripherals. Additionally, 
they were quite insistent that I return to 
Logan at least twice during the spring, not 
an inexpensive proposition. 

Fortunately, USU participates in the 
National Science Foundation’s ADVANCE 
Program, designed to increase the advance­
ment and retention of female scientists and 
engineers.5 USU ADVANCE administers a 
Transitional Support grant program, open 
to all women faculty at the university and 
designed to provide support when research 
is delayed or interrupted by family or other 
responsibilities. I thought this grant might 
be able to provide the necessary fi nancial 
resources to fund a portion of my telecom­
muting proposal, thus keeping my career 
on track. 

Happily, ADVANCE awarded me a grant 
of $4,500. I used ADVANCE funds for the 
following: a MacBook powerful enough to 
run desktop clients for our Dynix ILS and 
our Innovative ERM; Parallels software to 
run Windows on the Mac OS; a Treo smart­
phone so that I could be on call both via 
e­mail and voice at all times (between the 
time change and my reduced work sched­
ule, it was difficult to be tied to my home 
computer during the full workday); service 
agreements for both the phone and the laptop, 
since I did not have systems support; travel 
to and within Utah twice; and partial com­

Perhaps the greatest personal 
challenge of working from home is 
defining a clear boundary between 
when you are “at work” and “at 
home”—particularly when dealing 
with a two-hour time change. 

pensation for cell phone and Internet service, 
both of which were much more robust—and 
expensive—than I would have needed for 
personal use. 

During the six months that I was in Wash­
ington, I found that I was more than able to 
keep busy fulfilling my job responsibilities. In 
fact, there was not much in my daily routine 
to eliminate. I was able to process invoices 
through our ILS, (receiving scanned docu­
ments from vendors and re­submitting them to 
our accounting technician); negotiate license 
agreements and acquire new electronic re­
sources (major negotiations included the Free­
dom Collection, ARTstor, and NetAdvantage); 
maintain our existing e­journal and database 
collections using services such as SerialsSolu­
tions, EBSCOnet, and a homegrown database 
that populates our Web pages; maintain our 
ERM including processing coverage loads; 
close 2007 budgets and propose 2008 e­re­
source budgets; help develop and post to a 
public blog for the library; and select books 
for the History department, my liaison area. 

I enhanced e­journal access by incorpo­
rating brief catalog records into the online 
catalog, where they had never been before. I 
also remained the primary support contact for 
troubleshooting patron e­resource problems. 
(In fact, since so many support calls involve 
problems with remote access, I actually felt 
that I was better able to diagnose problems. I 
also think that I developed more empathy for 
the problems and concerns of our off­campus 
patrons, which I will certainly carry forward 
now that I am back on campus.) 

Finally, because we lived near College 
Park, I was able to use the University of 
Maryland’s McKeldin Library to continue my 
work on a periodicals bibliography. (The ma­
jor change to my schedule involved regular 

April 2008  217 C&RL News 



attendance at numerous meetings. I continued 
to attend major meetings by phone—and was 
even appointed to the newly formed library 
dean search committee, which met weekly. 
However, I did excuse myself from more 
minor meetings, which, in the end, improved 
my efficiency. I also noticed that meetings 
that I attended virtually seemed to run much 
more quickly.) 6 

After I returned in July 2007, several col­
leagues, including the director, commented 
that they were amazed at how responsive I 
was while working at a distance. Reference 
librarians were pleased that I was able to re­
solve database and electronic journal access 
problems efficiently from 2,000 miles away. 
My supervisors felt that the experiment had 
worked. I had endeavored to make my col­
leagues feel that I was just as available to them 
as if I had been sitting in my cubicle. And, 
in fact, I was. For the most part, when I am 
not telecommuting, I could, theoretically, sit 
through an entire day and not have any face­
to­face interaction if I didn’t seek it out—not 
that I would actually want to do that. 

Typical questions and requests occur via e­
mail, even between myself and people 20 feet 
away. The difference when telecommuting 
was that all interactions had to occur this way 
and follow­ups involved an e­mail response 
or a quick call rather than standing up and 
walking a few feet. So, I got to be a real pro 
with technologies like Skype (an Internet 
videoconferencing service) and Adium (a chat 
client aggregator for Macs); I had an enormous 
cell phone bill every month—including lots 
of text messaging. Naturally, e­mail use went 
through the roof. 

Challenges of working from home 
However, I faced numerous day­to­day chal­
lenges as well as questions about the long­
term viability of telecommuting. Perhaps the 
greatest personal challenge of working from 
home is defining a clear boundary between 
when you are “at work” and “at home”—par­
ticularly when dealing with a two­hour time 
change. This “blurring” of roles occasionally 
(not surprisingly to skeptics) could result in 

distractions while I was “on,” but also made 
it difficult for me to relax and shut­down 
my computer when I was “off.”7 As recom­
mended for telecommuters, I established a 
daily schedule and lined­up childcare so that 
I could “go to work” from 10:00 to 4:00. But, 
this didn’t mean that at 4:00 Eastern Time 
people on Mountain Time stopped having 
pressing needs . . . or that I didn’t take calls 
from students at 10:00 p.m. or while at the 
National Zoo on the weekend. 

A second surprise was how much I came 
to really appreciate our systems administra­
tors. There is absolutely nothing like trying to 
maintain all of your own technology to make 
you appreciate your systems administrators. 
Problems with networking required hour­
long calls with Verizon, Hewlett­Packard, and 
Apple. A faulty fax required numerous trips to 
Kinkos. When the printer ran out of ink unex­
pectedly as I was trying to finalize a license, 
I had to rush to the office supply store. I will 
never again underestimate the seamlessness 
of workplace technology. 

Finally, and perhaps most signifi cantly, 
I came to the conclusion that long­term, 
day­to­day telecommuting probably is not in 
the best interest of most library employees 
and organizations. I think that six months is 
probably the outside limit of what might be 
advisable. While I continued to get my work 
done, probably with more effi ciency than 
ever before, I found that I was missing out 
on the daily ebb and flow of organizational 
conversation. While I was in constant phone 
and electronic contact with my co­workers, 
I was absent from the casual conversation 
that happens around the proverbial water­
cooler—the serendipitous interaction that 
leads to more cohesive organizational vision 
and action. This is not to say that I feel as 
though I missed too much, but rather that I 
began to feel more like an individual actor 
as opposed to a member of an ensemble. 
That said, I did fi nd that my productivity was 
often much higher when working outside of 
the office and, if given my druthers, I think 

(continues on page 236) 

218C&RL News April 2008



(“Working from afar” continued from page 
218)
a day or two a week telecommuting would 
work great for me. 

In the end, I think that this experiment in 
telecommuting was a success both personally 
and professionally. My husband and I were 
able to keep our family together, experience a 
vibrant city, and continue to further our own 
professional goals. 

Moreover, I demonstrated that telecom­
muting, either full­time for a limited dura­
tion—or for a few days a week on an on­
going basis—is a viable option to consider, 
one that will provide personal benefi t to 
employees and an increase in productivity 
for their employers. 

Notes 
1. Andrew Pace, “Librarians Not in Librar­

ies,” Computers in Libraries 24 (October 
2004): 32­35. 

2. Will Manley, “Telework, or Watching 
Television,” American Libraries, 33 (April 
2002): 124. 

Ed. note: Send your news to: Grants & Acquisitions, 
C&RL News, 50 E. Huron St., Chicago, IL 60611-2795; 
e-mail: agalloway@ala.org. 

April 2008

3. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Work at 
Home in 2004” U.S. Dept. of Labor, Bureau 
of Labor Statistics, www.bls.gov/news.release 
/homey.nr0.htm. 

4. For a compelling study on the advan­
tages (to both employers and employees) 
of policies promoting benefits such as paid 
leave, childcare, and fl exible scheduling, 
see Barbara Gault and Vicky Lovell, “The 
Costs and Benefits of Policies to Advance 
Work/Life Integration,” American Behavioral 
Scientist 49 (May 2006): 1152–64. 

5. For information about the USU AD­
VANCE program, see websites.usu.edu 
/advance/. 

6. Snappy commentary on the advantages 
and disadvantages of face to face meetings 
for librarians can be found from Meredith Far­
kas, “No more f2f meetings . . . EVER!” Infor­
mation Wants to be Free, meredith.wolfwa­
ter.com/wordpress/index.php/2007/07/21 
/no­more­f2f­meetings­ever/. 

7. For a review of the literature on blurring 
and a study that examines academic parents 
who frequently work from home, see Stephan 
Desrochers, Jeanne M. Hilton, and Laurie 
Larwood, “Preliminary Validation of the Work­
Family Integration­Blurring Scale,” Journal of 
Family Issues 26 (May 2005): 442–66. 

219 C&RL News 

http:websites.usu.edu
www.bls.gov/news.release
mailto:agalloway@ala.org